The
scandal that has ousted General Michael Flynn from the post of
National Security Adviser is absurd and concocted. Though there were
probably other reasons for his going - including his apparently poor
performance in the post of National Security Adviser - his
resignation is nonetheless a heavy blow for President Trump.

General
Michael Flynn’s resignation as National Security Adviser is by far
the biggest blow President Trump has suffered since his inauguration.

As
I have written previously, this is a completely concocted scandal.
The most General Flynn is accused of is telling Russian ambassador
Kislyak that Russia should not overreact to the sanctions President
Obama imposed on Russia during the height of the Clinton leaks
hysteria in December. Even the ‘anonymous officials’ who claim
to have seen the transcript of the tapes of his conversations with
Kislyak admit that he did not tell Kislyak that President Trump would
cancel the sanctions. Instead all Flynn did was call for was
restraint.

I
cannot see how this could possibly have threatened US national
security. Nor do I see how – just three weeks before Donald
Trump’s inauguration – it could be considered to be ‘undermining’
President Obama’s foreign policy, which Donald Trump was publicly
criticising anyway.

It
seems that back in January that was also the FBI’s view, and that
it was reporting that after checking the transcripts of Flynn’s
telephone conversations with Kislyak, that it could find nothing
illicit in them. That is obviously right, and in any sane world that
would have been the end of the whole affair.

Yet
on the strength of these calls Sally Yates as Acting Attorney General
apparently advised the White House that General Flynn might have
committed an offence under the Logan Act and initiated an FBI
investigation of General Flynn’s actions, saying he might have
opened himself up to blackmail by the Russian government.

It
should be said clearly that this is totally absurd. Town Hall has
provided a comprehensive refutation of the claim that there has been
an offence under the Logan Act and as I cannot improve on it I here
reproduce it

[T]he
Logan Act dates to 1799, when a state legislator with no ties to any
administration tried to assert himself as personal negotiator for
final peace with France. The anti-Jefferson Federalists did not like
this private initiative, so passed the Logan Act to make private
ventures intent on negotiating personal treaties over international
feuds a crime. The bill was whipped out in days.

And
in the 200 years since, not a single individual has ever been
prosecuted under the act, not one. And its constitutionality is
widely doubted in any event, even by Democrat legal scholars. Funny
how precedent and constitutionality matter when they work for a
party, and not at all when they work against it.

The
folly of casting anyone – let alone General Flynn, an incoming
National Security Advisor – as violator of this important-sounding,
but utterly obsolete and toothless Logan Act would be funny enough,
if it were not being dressed up in congressional outrage, with somber
questions like – yes – “what did he know, and when did he know
it?” Watergate already, really?

To
compound the absurdity, if General Flynn violated the Logan Act by
talking to the Russian ambassador, then Barack Obama as a candidate
in 2008 did so on a far greater scale. As Town Hall also says

In
July 2008, independent of any policy conversations by staff,
candidate Obama went to the Middle East and Europe and spoke
extensively, one-on-one, about policy with leaders from Kuwait,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, the West Bank, Israel, France, Germany and
Britain. As a candidate, not as a president-elect.

To
cap the irony and Obama counter-example, before assuming office and
not president-elect, Mr. Obama spoke of peace and how to end world
conflicts on July 24, 2008, in a speech at the Victory Column in
Berlin, before an estimated 200,000 people. But no talk of Logan Act.
None.

It
has been suggested rather portentously that the true reason General
Flynn resigned was not because of the conversations he had with
Kislyak but because he lied about these conversations to
Vice-President Pence, and that a furious Pence has taken umbrage and
has insisted that Flynn must go.

This
is only marginally less absurd.

Firstly
since General Flynn did nothing remotely wrong either by holding the
conversations with Kislyak or by what he is reported to have said
during them, what he said about them to Vice-President Pence really
shouldn’t matter.

Secondly,
it is overwhelmingly likely that General Flynn – as he says –
simply made a mistake.

As
a former intelligence officer General Flynn surely knows that
Kislyak’s telephone conversations are monitored by US intelligence.
Indeed it is a virtual certainty that as the former head of the
Defence Intelligence Agency he has actually seen transcripts of
Kislyak’s conversations and of those of other Russian officials.

Given
that that is so Flynn would surely have known when he reported to
Pence that US intelligence had been listening in to his conversations
with Kislyak and that any lie he said to Pence would be quickly
discovered. Since he didn’t in fact say any remotely improper to
Kislyak he wouldn’t have had any reason to lie anyway.

Most
likely Flynn thought he was being asked whether he had told Kislyak
that the Trump administration would lift the sanctions, which he
denied doing because he didn’t do so. In the confusion this was
mistaken for a denial that the subject of the sanctions was even
discussed, when it was in fact touched on, though only in the most
innocuous way.

In
the rush of events this sort of thing occasionally happens, and in
his resignation statement Flynn all but says that this is what
happened. It is by far the most plausible explanation for the whole
affair, and no-one who is not completely paranoid or who is not
pursuing an agenda would think otherwise.

Why
then has Flynn been forced to resign?

There
is a possibility that, disproportionate though that would be,
Vice-President Pence might indeed have been genuinely angry about the
mix-up, and might – despite receiving an apology from Flynn –
have been so angry with Flynn that he insisted that Flynn should go.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Pence is a key figure within
the Trump administration, and if he is indeed as angry with Flynn as
some reports suggest, then Trump may have felt that he had no option
but to let Flynn go.

I
have to say however that my own view is that the explanation that
Flynn was forced to go because he lied to Pence looks to me like a
cover story to hide the true reasons why Flynn had to go.

I
suspect these are (1) that Flynn is still the subject of the FBI
probe launched by Sally Yates; and (2) that there were increasing
doubts about Flynn’s fitness for the role of National Security
Adviser.

Turning
first to the FBI probe, Sally Yates’s warnings to the White House
that Flynn might be blackmailed by the Russian government because of
what he said to Kislyak on the telephone, and the claim that he might
have violated the Logan Act, are for the reasons I have discussed
previously absurd. As I have said media reports that circulated in
January were saying that the FBI after checking the transcripts of
Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak could find nothing illicit in
them. Nonetheless it seems the probe Sally Yates ordered is still
continuing.

In
passing I should say that I find it impossible to believe that Sally
Yates herself genuinely believes that the warnings she is supposed to
have given the White House about Flynn are anything other than
absurd. What they in fact show is not that there is a serious case
against Flynn but – as was also shown by Yates’s refusal to
defend the ‘travel ban’ Executive Order in the courts – that as
Acting Attorney General Yates was actively working against the
President and the administration she was supposed to be serving, in
this case by making farfetched claims against one of the President’s
advisers.

The
problem is that absurd though the FBI probe Sally Yates launched is,
once launched it cannot be stopped by Presidential order, since doing
so would be an abuse of Presidential power.

The
result is that Flynn and the whole administration risked being
distracted for weeks or months by constant sniping by the Democrats
and the administration’s enemies within the US bureaucracy whilst
the probe was underway. It is therefore understandable that Trump’s
two closest political advisers – Preibus and Bannon – apparently
both concluded that the administration simply could not afford this,
and decided that Flynn would have to go.

I
would add that the recent media attacks on Flynn are grounded on the
fact that an FBI investigation is underway. Had there not been such
an investigation it is difficult to see how the media attacks on
Flynn could have gained traction. Indeed it is doubtful they would
have happened at all. Given that were it not for these media attacks
Flynn would still be President Trump’s National Security Adviser,
Flynn’s ouster is Sally Yates’s parting gift to an administration
she clearly deeply opposes and was working against.

Having
said all this, Donald Trump and his team would probably have stuck
with Flynn had there not also been serious concerns about his
performance as National Security Adviser.

By
most accounts Flynn is an abrasive personality, who makes enemies
easily, and there have been numerous reports of his poor management
skills in a job where such skills are essential. The fact that he
obviously failed to take proper notes of his conversations with
Kislyak – relying instead on his memory – is just one example of
his sloppy approach to paperwork, something which incidentally must
have dismayed Pence the lawyer.

Flynn
also clearly has an obsessive streak, as shown by his pathological
hostility to Iran, which is obviously inappropriate for someone who
is the President’s most important adviser on national security
questions.

There
is also another possible problem with Flynn, which may have worked
against him. This is his habit of self-promotion as shown by his
extraordinary appearance in the White House briefing room to read out
his statement about Iran.

In
the 1970s, in the age of Kissinger and Brzezinski, the President’s
National Security Adviser ran US foreign policy, ousting the
Secretary of State and the State Department from that role.
Unsurprisingly Kissinger and Brzezinsky were media stars, far
outshining the Secretaries of State of the period (William Rogers,
Cyrus Vance and Edward Muskie).

In
the 1980s under Ronald Reagan a successful effort was made to
re-establish the Secretary of State’s and the State Department’s
primacy in managing the nation’s foreign policy, with the National
Security Adviser once again relegated to an advisory role. Since
then no National Security Adviser has achieved anything like the
power or prominence that Kissinger and Brzezinski once had.

It
is not impossible that the very public role Flynn was carving out for
himself alarmed some people within the foreign policy and national
security bureaucracy, with fears that Flynn was seeking to make
himself Donald Trump’s Kissinger or Brzezinski. If so it would not
be surprising if the bureaucracy united against him to see off the
challenge, with even senior officials like Tillerson and Mattis in
that case probably wanting Flynn to go.

Whatever
the reasons for his going, Flynn’s departure is however a serious
blow for Donald Trump.

It
is a much more serious blow than the court decisions on the ‘travel
ban’ Executive Order, which I expect the administration to reverse
or overcome.

Losing
Flynn by contrast shows weakness, and has given Donald Trump’s many
enemies – including those in the bureaucracy – their first blood.
They will now be hungering for more.

Trump
and his advisers presumably calculated that the damage that would
have been done by holding on to Flynn would have been greater than
the damage that was done by letting him go. Time will show whether
they are right. Much will depend on who Trump choses to replace him.